Problem fetching contacts from Yahoo! Address Book using PHP's CURL.

Question

Hi

I had to get the user's yahoo address book using PHP's CURL when user gave login name and password. It was working fine. Address book has been got as CSV format. But now suddenly things are stop working. I am just getting some yahoo's html code instead of CSV format. I am guessing that yahoo is somehow restricted fetching address book using CURL.

I did one experiment that I manually did the import contacts from Yahoo service. Before importing contacts yahoo shown the CAPTCHA to verify. I guess this CAPTCHA mechanism is recently added. Is this CAPTCHA mechanism preventing to get the address book when I am using PHP's CURL?

Actually I do not want get address book using Yahoo OAuth or BBAuth.

Any one have idea?

Answer 1

Is this CAPTCHA mechanism preventing to get the address book when I am using PHP's CURL?

Yup - a CAPTCHA is there to tell human users apart from automated programs. If they are protecting the CSV export with a CAPTCHA, it could be that there is no way for your script to get hold of the CSV download any more. You would have to look for alternative means of getting the data if available - maybe they offer a XML or other kind of direct download?